


Long Ago (When You wore White and I wore Red)

by Sassaphrass



Series: I hold with those who Favour Fire [4]
Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: Angst, Archangel twins being bros, Character Vignettes, Drifting Apart, Gen, Grief/Mourning, The more things change, They've seen civilizations rise and fall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 03:13:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5075611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sassaphrass/pseuds/Sassaphrass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Together Michael and Gabriel have seen civilizations rise and fall. They may be immortal but time always leaves it's mark. </p>
<p>Time made Michael kind, and it made Gabriel cruel. Or was it the other way around?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Long Ago (When You wore White and I wore Red)

**Babylon 2000BC**

 

****

Michael stood on the ziggarrat balanced precisely on the edge his heels braced against the brink, his toes hanging precariously over the abyss.

 

The wall slopes outward from beneath his feet. If he dropped straight down he'd hit almost immediately and do no damage. If he flung himself out beyond it he would hit the sand, and also do no harm. Probably.

 

Michael stares down and wonders. Perhaps if you flung yourself just far enough that you'd still hit the wall and have enough momentum....

 

He hears the flap of wings.

 

“An irony, brother, to find you here in Babylon.”

 

Michael quirks his lips the familiar voice.

 

“What are your thoughts?” Gabriel asks.

 

“I was wondering if it's possible for our kind to actually fall.”

 

Gabriel moves closer to him and looks down over the edge.

  
“That's in rather poor taste.” Gabriel quips. “When you've seen many angels fall.”

 

“In battle at the stroke of a blade to the wing.”

 

Gabriel backs away from the edge. “What other way is there for us to fall?” he replies in annoyance at Michael's apparent slowness.

 

Michael edges forward so he is barely able to keep his weight far enough back to avoid the plummet.

 

“If we kept our wings furled and jumped.”

 

He feels Gabriel's worry and fear like cool water over a burn.

 

“Why do you speak of such things brother? Surely no angel would do such a thing,”

 

“I wonder simply if it is possible or whether the wings would snap open against the will.”

 

Gabriel is frozen and fearful and disgusted. Michael can feel it in his chest without having to look away from the fall.

 

“I imagine they would. Father does so detest seeing his creations destroy themselves.”

 

Michael smiles at that and looks up. Not at Gabriel but across the city. It's almost completely dark only a few lamps twinkling on roofs or in windows. It is lit mainly by the stars. Michael cranes his neck to take in the great sweep of them.

 

It has always seemed to him that Father's voice echoes loudest in the deserts of the world, which was strange, since they held so little of what was wonderful on earth in comparison to other places.

 

Perhaps that was why. As a voice rings loudest in an empty room so Father's presence seems nearest against the empty vastness of the sand and sky.

 

He can feel his Father's presence like a great, distant heartbeat. It comforts him and fills him with light. Soothes him, as does the nearer and stronger presence of his brother, whose urgency and anger beat like a hot fire in his mind.

 

Gabriel hauls him back from the ledge and puts a hand to Michael's face. Michael resists the urge to flinch from the touch as he remembers the warm stickiness of blood on his brother's hands.

 

His brother should never have had blood on his hands. It should never have come to that. He shouldn't have been in that position, not when he so loves humanity, and is, by his nature, a gentle and peaceful being. Their father had not made him for violence and death.

 

Michael had ruined that. Had marred his brother with his blood and his bloodlust and then made it worst by putting the weight of justice on his brother's shoulders.

 

“You should not speak of such things.” Gabriel hisses.

 

Michael knows through their bond exactly what has him so worried. Disobediance, the wrath of their father and his rage at those thoughtlessly destroy what they have been given.

 

Their father hates no one so much a suicides.

 

Michael feels something in him soften and tries to smile at his brother. “You need not trouble yourself so Gabriel. It's idle talk-nothing more, after all have I a sin it is of being too obediant, and unthinkingly so.”

 

Michael can feel Gabriel's fear ease, but his brother does not step away and instead brings their foreheads together, both hands holding Michael's face.

 

“I will always trouble myself about you little brother. You're too foolish for your own good.”

 

Michael nods. “I know.”

 

He lets himself lean against his twin, despising his own weakness even as the closeness eases something jagged that was knocked loose in Sodom and Gamorrah.

 

“What do you think it's like? To be them?” he asks looking out over Babylon.

 

Gabriel snorts. “Frustrating I expect. They hardly manage to glean any understanding of the world before they drop dead and have to start all over again.”

 

Michael rolls his eyes. “I'm being serious Gabriel.”

 

“As am I.” Gabriel answers. He's not though. Michael can tell by the bubbling mirth his brother isn't bothering to try and hide in their bond.

 

“Father loves them.”

 

“Father loves all his creations, and especially my foolish little brother who strives so hard to follow his orders even when those orders grieve him.”

 

There it is the undercurrent that has been flowing through Gabriel since they destroyed the cities. Fear, worry, grief and rage all tangled together so not even Michael could seperate them to find the cause of each.

 

“Almost as much as my dear twin who pleases him so greatly, with far fewer misteps, and all without having to strive at all.”

 

Gabriel huffs and tries to suppress a grin. “Stop it.” His face falls as he looks at his brother. “I wish you would let down this burden you insist on carrying, or, if that is not possible, that at least you would let me shoulder the weight.”

 

“It is not your weight to bear brother.”  
  


Gabriel opens his mouth to speak but Michael doesn't let him hear it. He leaps from the edge into the abyss and allows himself to fall for a single freeing moment before he snaps his wings opens and rises.

 

Gabriel is standing watching him leave. Michael can feel him through their bond, his desperate desire for Michael to stay- to explain, but he can't explain. Michael can't even understand his feeling himself.

 

He goes home. To Father's light and his love and his infinite inscrutable understanding, it's not long before Gabriel joins him and they find a measure of peace, for a time.

 

Until Father loses his temper again and Michael is sent once more to wade through blood. Gabriel stays closer this time. Michael is not sure whether it is an improvement on before or yet another failure.

 

**Eqypt 1290 BC**

****

Gabriel find Michael on the edge of the red sea furiously scrubbing his hands with sand. He has his wings out and curled around him as if to ward off a blow.

 

He didn't call Gabriel, but Gabriel came because even a thousand miles away he knew that Michael was crying.

 

He wades out into the water where Michael is kneeling and scrubbing at their hands.

 

 

Gabriel hates to see his brother in pain. “You could have used an amphorae or sent a lesser angel.” He comments, trying to mask his irritation at the way his brother constantly flirts with his own self-destruction.

 

Michael takes a deep shuddering breath but nonetheless can't speak without his voice breaking a half-dozen times. “It wouldn't have been right. They deserved the respect and honour of dying at the hands of ....of someone who would make it clean.”

 

Gabriel snorts.

 

Michael finally looks at him.

 

Gabriel looks into his face and into his soul and he understands.

 

He sighs and looks towards the distant horizon, a pillar of cloud is visible in the distance.

 

“Why them do you suppose?” he asks idly.

 

Michael jerks his head in surprise. This comes close to questioning the will of God.

 

“I suppose it does demonstrate a point well.” Gabriel continues. “Shepherds, and herdsmen- the lowly, the humble. To raise them up is somewhat more dramatic than trying to raise... oh I don't know the pharaoh would be.”

 

Michael scowls and stands. “You shouldn't talk like that.”

 

“Why? I'm not doubting, simply seeking to further understand the divine mind.”

 

“Of course.”

 

Gabriel glances at Michael who doesn't quite smile and raises his eyebrows.

 

Gabriel grins. “Come, let's to higher ground before they arrive. This promises to be quite the show...”

 

Michael stands and they walk back to shore. Gabriel picks up Michael's breastplate from where he had abandoned it on the sand, and passes his brother his swords. He pretends he cannot see where Michael has used sand to rub his skin raw as he tried to cleanse himself of innocent blood. It's already healing anyway.

 

 

 

 

**Haida Nation 960 BC**

 

After David's death, both the boy and the king, Gabriel is adrift. And for what feels like the first time it falls to Michael to find his brother and comfort him.

 

Gabriel is perched in the great trees along the pacific ocean. He is watching something in the distance and doesn't turn when Michael alights on the branch next to him.

 

Michael has never been so good with words as Gabriel so he sits next to him and tries through their weakened bond to convey his sorrow and his consolation.

 

“The trees here are beautiful.” he finally remarks.

 

Gabriel turns to him with a disbelieving smile, as if Michael's comment is so ridiculous as to be hilarious.

 

“This entire region is tuly magnificent.”

 

“And humanity is the same here as elsewhere.” Gabriel remarks, his voice heavy with sadness and bitterness.

 

“They wouldn't be human if they were otherwise.” Michael points out.

 

Gabriel huffs, and something in the air catches Michael attention. He stands and cranes his neck to better take in the spectacle. Gabriel watches his brother's rapt attention, with pretended indifference, before he finally gives in and stands next to him trying to see what has caught his twin's eye.

 

“What are you looking at?”

 

Michael points and Gabriel follows his finger to a pair of eagle spiralling towards the ocean their talons clasped together.

 

“Have you never seen them dance before?” Gabriel asks, genuinely curious. Michael's duties don't send him to wander the entirety of their Father's creation in the way that Gabriel and his sisters do.

 

“No.” Michael replies soft as a sigh. “What are they doing?”

 

Gabriel smiles and shrugs. “I don't know. Raphael would, if you could find her to ask.”

 

Michael turns to his brother a familiar wicked quirk to his lips. Gabriel recognizes it and tries to take a step back, but he is slow and his brother has grabbed him and swept him into the air before he can move.

 

Relenting Gabriel hooks his leg around his brother's, beats his wings, and plummets downward in a tight spiral, with his brother howling laughter roaring in his ears.

 

They make the dive three times each one quicker and more wild than the last. They alight, finally on the beach, both breathless from the thrill and from their laughter.

 

Michael lays back and smiles up at his brother, but frowns when he feels a jagged stab of sorrow and pain as the smile slips from Gabriel's face.

 

“They die, Michael. All of them.”

 

Michael sits up quickly, and once again he's too slow, and Gabriel takes off, leaving Michael reaching for an empty space.

 

 

**Jerusalem 0 AD**

 

There are other wars, and other failures. New heartbreaks and old hurts that never heal quite right. There is nothing so terrible as to be immortal and love those whose lives are so fleeting. Gabriel never quite recovers from his time as David's father.

 

There are other chosen children, often doomed and occasionally triumphant.

 

Sweet, stupid, vicious Samson who trusts too easily but dies well (Michael standing unseen, heeds his final plea, kisses his brow, and pulls the temple down around them, Samson is crushed in beneath the rubble but so are his enemies).

 

Wise gentle Samuel.

 

Unyielding Gideon.

 

Loyal Ruth.

 

On and on a list of triumphs and tragedies some great and some small.

 

The day they kill the Nazarene as a traitor and blasphemer all the archangels gather and watch. There is a strange sense of finality, though they have watched the deaths of so many of God's chosen.

 

Raphael weeps for she loved him, like she had loved few other humans. She'd even forgiven him his temper and his truly atrocious metaphors.

 

Gabriel sneers. “See, I told you they'd kill this one too.”

 

Michael glances at his brother but says nothing. After all, what is there to say? Gabriel is right. He did say this one would die and now he has.

 

Gabriel turns and walks away. Michael places a hand on the shoulder of his weeping sister, and after a moment follows his twin.

 

It takes some time to find him. He has flown out of the city.

 

Michael sees his brother through a stranger's eyes, and cannot help but see how the half a millenia since David's death has changed him. He is harder now, there's a twist to his mouth that robs it of it's old kindness. He wears black.

 

“There was a time you wore white brother.” is all Michael can think to say.

 

Gabriel glares at him. “There was a time you wore red.”

 

It's true. Red has always been Michael's colour. First blood on his armour and bare skin, and then the brilliant brightness had been dyed into the tunics he wore.

 

He's been wearing black for millennia though. Since long before David died.   
  


Gabriel turns away, and finishes the thought “And now we both wear black.”

 

Michael doesn't know what to say to that.

 

“I shall have to go to Mary, and tell her her eldest boy is dead.”

 

“She'll be alright Gabriel,” Michael tries to comfort his brother. “James will see to that.”

 

Gabriel sneers. “There are some hurts that cannot heal, Michael. You'd think you'd have accepted that by now.”

 

Michael comes to stand next to his brother. “What can I say, I've always been stubborn.”

 

Gabriel laughs at that, a harsh broken sound. “Yes, that is certainly true.”

 

They stand in silence. “She will be alright.” Michael tries again. Gabriel had never had much to do with Jeshua the Nazarene but he was fond of the boy's mother. Not a boy anymore, not anything anymore. Dead.

 

Like all the others.

 

Gabriel glares at Michael, and Michael wonders how he'll pay for that remark because he surely will.

 

There was a time when Gabriel wore white, and Michael wore red. Purity and Blood. Serenity and Rage. Indifference and Love.

 

They both wore black these days. For the dead. Beloved and despised alike.

 

Love had left a mark on all their siblings. Gabriel perhaps deepest of all, but Uriel's heart had been broken recently by some woman in Egypt, and judging by Raphael's wailing by the cross she would have trouble recovering from this loss.

 

Only Michael had never lost a human who he thought was...particularly special.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So, I actually wrote most of this a few months ago, but I'm finally getting around to watching the last few episodes of Season 2 so I thought I'd spruce it up and post it. 
> 
> Has Gabriel finally fully lost it? (Don't actually tell me I've not finished yet!) 
> 
> Bald Eagle spiral flight thing is an actual thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAwcoFoAk_k  
> (Don't ask me why the video is set to Adele though...)


End file.
